


The Witching Cities

by RRileyMcCourt (Refkins)



Series: The Witching Cities [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Cities, Creation Myth, Deities, Multi, Personified Cities, The Witching Cities, Utopia, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-25 23:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20033947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Refkins/pseuds/RRileyMcCourt
Summary: Let me tell you the origin of the Witching Cities.





	1. Prologue

Once, in the far north, there was a witch of vast primordial power who shared a dream with a human. Together, they built a magnificent city at the edge of the tundra, whose light became a beacon to all humanity. Craft and knowledge crystallized in the utopia birthed by the witch and human’s covenant, but a day came on which the covenant was broken, and the city was destroyed by the armies of man, its people massacred. With the dream shattered, the witch returned to her city’s ruins and sequestered herself among the graves for time uncounted, slowly passing from human memory in all but the sparse myths shared among the races of men. There she waited, bound to the ashes of the once-great city.

A young man sought the witch within the city’s huddled ruins; though it was said that many had been cast from life in the graveling city’s embrace, the young man had no care for the warnings of folklore. He braved the forbidden place with a vision in his heart—one he believed the witch would share, for he desired to rebuild the city of legend that its light might shine upon humanity again.

He found the witch among the ruins, swaddled in black furs. Tucked into a shrine-like hut nearly her exact size, she wore a wide-brimmed hat to shelter her weathered face, and her hands clasped crossed ankles, there warmed by the small campfire before her. Its smoke trickled skyward, a fading beacon.

“O Great Witch,” said the young man, beaming with the joy of his discovery, “I have journeyed long in search of you, and at last we meet. I seek your favor.”

“Favor?” croaked the Witch. “There can be no favors in this world. What does a son of man want from one such as I?”

“I would raise this once-great city from its ancient dust. Let the light of the world shine once more and guide my people, varied as we are, to the fulfillment of our potential! I have heard of your love for this city, Great Witch; let us restore it together.”

The Witch chortled and told the young man that it could not be done. “I am not so great as I once was,” she said, “and I am bound to this place. The city and I are one, and it may not rise again, for its time is as much of the past as I am myself. Build not on the graves of the dead, and leave this mausoleum be.”

“If I cannot match what once was,” said the young man, “then I will build a new city sharing the purpose of the one that once was. I shall build it nearby, that it may always know its inspiration. May it guide humanity half so well.”

The Witch looked into him. He withstood her gaze, and at last she demanded he share the full vision of his mind with her. This he did, such that she understood the warm beacon of hope, standing against the cold dark, which lay in his imagination.

The Witch said, “This I can entertain. I cannot leave this place, but this is not so limiting as I first suggested. I am more deity than the witch you call me—my power is more than you can know. Let you and I form a new covenant, predicated on that which I still honor: I shall split myself into parts of my power who will, with human builders, create new magnificent cities across this land, in image of my ancient home. In so doing, we shall together light humanity’s way through the dark, without forsaking these long-dead souls whom I still protect. Should you agree, you will leave here with the best part of my power, but do not forget to return to me, ‘lest the covenant fail and so too your city.”

The young man agreed at once and, clasping the Witch’s extended hand, burned with white fire. When his vision cleared he saw that he now held the hand of a handsome woman, his equal in race and age, though taller than he by two heads. She seemed to glow like hearthfire, clad in a gown of armored gold, and he marveled at her grace and fortitude and the bright warmth of her hand.

“This is the Witch of Cinders,” said the Great Witch. “She is the greatest part of my power.” And so it was, for the Great Witch was reduced in size and, though the young man did not know it, in kindness and wisdom as well.

“Mother,” said the Witch of Cinders, “I will go now only a small way south to build a city echoing yours in all but warmth, for which it will rival its progenitor. May it be a beacon to those lost in the cold.”

The Second Builder and the Witch of Cinders left the Great Witch and her ruined city, and there she remained in solitude for twenty further years. When the Second Builder returned, tanned and wrinkled by age and toil, he came clad in fine furs and golden charms. “O Great Witch,” said he, “our city burns bright and shelters all who seek nourishment. By the fire of your child’s hands do we all prosper. Thus begun, I have returned to seek your favor once more, that the second city might be built. I thus fulfill our covenant.”

The Great Witch laughed. “I have seen the grandeur of your city through the eyes of my child, but, foolish human that you are, a further covenant is required. Two already you have formed, though you seem not to know it, and a third you may not take. Bring to me another whose vision is equal to your own that they may build the next city in your stead.”

Dismissed, the Second Builder left, returning in two years’ time with a dark-skinned woman.

“O Great Mother,” said the woman, “if thou willst allow it, I shall build for thee a city in the far south, a mirror to that which the Witch of Cinders protects. Just as that city is a warm haven in this cold land, so mine shall be a place of cool respite in the hot south.”

The Great Witch grinned and bade the woman share her vision for the second city, which she did. Approving, the Witch clasped the woman’s hand and in so doing split in twain such that, when the new Builder’s eyes cleared of white fire, she held the hand of a beautiful woman her equal in race and age, though taller by two heads.

“This is the Witch of Ice,” the Great Witch said of the tall, silver-haired woman standing quiet and still in her delicate gown and high crown.

“As Mother bids, so shall I do,” said she softly. “My sister gained the greater part of Mother’s power, but my own is less by only a meagre measure. I shall craft a city as grand as the first. This I swear.”

Again the Great Witch was reduced, and she bade them leave. “Do not forget to return, for there is power left in me, and the covenant is not yet complete.”

Another twenty years the Witch passed in isolation, but as before the Second Builder returned, now accompanied by a youth of the age the Second Builder had been when he first sought the Witch’s power. The Second Builder greeted the Witch as he had done before, and then the youth spoke.

“I am the son of the Third Builder,” he said, “and I have seen the work of both she and the Second, my aged benefactor. I would do as they have done, and through your assistance build a city in the distant east. That people are rich with knowledge unknown to the people of the north and south, and I would help them create a center from which they can share all that they’ve learned.”

“Very well,” said the Great Witch. “I have seen the splendor of the two cities through the eyes of my children. Impart to me your vision, that I may measure it against my own.” When he had done so, she extended her hand, and as had happened before, the new builder burned with white fire, and the Witch split once more, reducing yet further as she did.

“I am the Witch of Storms,” said the new being who shared the youth’s race and age but stood taller than he by two heads. Arrayed in bronzed armor, she cut an imposing figure as she spoke thusly: “I have not the power of my elder sisters, but my wisdom is twice theirs. And more the fool my Mother is for making it so. In creating me, you have reduced yourself beyond reason. Without my wisdom or my sisters’ strength, what is left to you?” She spat at the Great Witch’s feet, extinguishing the campfire, though its smoke still curled into the clouds and the Great Witch still smiled.

“The covenant is yet unfinished,” the Great Witch said. “Bring another, that you may have your fourth city.”

As before, the Builders and newborn Witch left, and as before the Second Builder returned two decades later. Now far advanced in age, he was helped by a broad woman of ample strength who bore him up when his footing slipped.

“O Great Witch, I bring to you my granddaughter, known to all as a warrior brave and true, now ready to engage a new phase in life,” said the Second Builder.

“In the west,” said his granddaughter, “a people live by the sea in small communities. For a time, I lived among them and saw how their lives were ruled only by survival. I have seen the magnificence of the cities protected by your children, and I would return the kindness that seafaring people showed me and a build a like city to give them comfort, that not all their time need be ruled by hunger.”

“So noble,” laughed the Witch. “Intentions as true as my own, when all this began, but now my greatest work lies in ruin; what was it for? Do these people want your help as you want mine? Let this be as you wish and let us see, as I have seen for myself the wonder of the cities three through the eyes of my children. Tell me of the city in your mind.”

The granddaughter complied and took the Witch’s hand, birthing through covenant the Witch of Winds who shared the granddaughter’s race and age, though she stood two heads taller.

“In me rests the remains of my Mother’s kindness,” said she. “My power is feeble compared to that of my eldest sisters, but with what I have, we shall build a beacon of guidance for those wayward souls seeking safe haven.”

Now the Great Witch was so reduced that, as the group made to leave, she stopped them and said unto the Second Builder, “We come close now to the end, and there is little time left for you and I. Tarry not, and bring to me two more who will build, for I will impart the last of my power to them. Hurry! Time is short!”

The Second Builder promised and returned within the year accompanied by the youngest companions yet—youthful twins.

When the Second Builder had made his greeting, the first of the twins said, “O Great Witch, we have seen the four grand cities in all their luminescence. So seeing, we carry a vision whose realization requires you power.”

“A city of splendor you have in every cardinal direction; let us now fill the heart of the compass,” said the other.

“Two cities, joined as one,” said the first twin.

“One city, built of two,” said the second twin.

“Alike in all ways,” said the first.

“But once explored, utterly opposites,” said the second.

“And further examined, again the same,” said the first.

“Until it is not,” said the second.

The witch cackled and in tone of praise declared, “A more ideal pair there could not be! I have seen the realized potential of the cities four, but in you I understand the fifth! Show me your vision now, dear twins, and take my hands!” As she said this, she claimed their hands and they, speaking their vision unto her, burned with white fire. When their voices failed and the fire faded, the Great Witch seemed gone, her black furs left in a pile at the base of her hut, the wide-brimmed hat a cap for her abandoned raiment. In her place stood two slender women, the twins’ equal in race and age, though each two heads taller than either twin.

“Together, we are the Witch of Illusion,” said the two Witches.

The first, clad in the colors of a dove, said, “Identical in all ways, save for when we are not.”

The second, wearing the garb of a grackle, added, “Equal in power always, save for when we are not.”

“One for truth,” said the Bright Witch.

“One for falsehood,” said the Dark Witch.

“And may you never know which is which, or if there is a difference,” said the Witch of Illusion in two voices. “We see your vision and share it.”

The twins still clasped the hands of the Witch of Illusion, and together the four made their way out of the ruins. The Second Builder began to follow them, but a whisper on the wind gave him pause.

“I am spent now,” said the Great Witch’s voice, “but the covenant still stands, and the only soul that is left to me is still bound here.

“Know this, Second Builder: each covenant sustains upon the last and none can stand without the first, for each was built in the image of the one before. You, who occupy the city closest to this vast cemetery; you, who stand beside the Witch of Cinders, carrying the best part of my power; it is to you that I leave the task of guarding this place. Teach your people the importance and value, and ensure that the ruins are never disturbed. If you do not and harm befalls this place, all that we have built shall fall.”

The Great Witch’s voice spoke no more, and the Second Builder returned to his city.


	2. Illymere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A messenger from Illymere locates Eriahmys to seek her help in resolving the crisis his city faces. With her aid, he seeks out the Witches of his own city, looking for answers.

The messenger found Eriahmys in a smoky cottage settled in the pine forest beyond her city walls. On his entering, the tall woman turned her hooded eyes upon him without concern or even reproach, though he had barely knocked before entering.

“Greetings, Eriahmys,” he said. “Your acquaintances speak well of you, though they don’t seem to recognize the Witch of Cinders when they see her.”

She smiled then, letting loose a sighing breath as she faced him fully. “It has been a long time since I answered to either name. I use Eri.”

“It doesn’t suit you.”

“Perhaps not, but it is a bit pretentious to go by the name of one’s city, no?” She studied him for a heartbeat and continued, “There was once a time when I knew the name of every inhabitant here, but the growth has outmatched me. You have me at a disadvantage.”

He grinned, his beard seeming the bushier by the action. “I would regardless. I came from Illymere in search of you. They call me Jehf.”

That gave her pause. “And what portents do you bear, friend Jehf?”

“Ill tidings, my lady. A dark cloud hangs over Illymere—the Faux Burg is ravaged by crime and stalked by death. Illness now spreads to the Vrai Hectare and with it the first threat of serious crime. Such things are unheard of in all the Witching Cities, and it was my people’s first recourse to seek the consul of our Witch.

“The Bright Witch we found first, but she had no words for us. Almost she behaved as if we were not there. We sought the Dark Witch next, but when she chose to show herself, she did so in a rage. In her fury, she slew many of the citizenry and before our eyes the city began to crumble to dust, like a mirage. She ceased her assault, but now the Witch of Illusion together struggle to stay the city’s deterioration.

“I have come to you to seek wisdom and guidance,” Jehf finished. “The Witch of Illusion spoke sporadically of covenants, but in these words we could find no sense.”

“They have such a habit of contradicting each other,” Eriahmys said with a click of her tongue. “What do you hope to return home with, Jehf?”

“A solution,” he said.

Eriahmys nodded. “It may be some time before I can offer you that. For now, follow me.” Without waiting, she strode from the house, her common garb transforming in an instant to the golden armored gown worn by the Witch of Cinders in the myths of the Witching Cities’ founding.

In short time they attained the city called Eriahmys. Its activity halted wherever the Witch of Cinders stepped as the citizenry boggled at a myth made flesh. The symbol of Eriahmys’s armor lay beyond doubt, her very presence so definitively divine that none questioned the evidence of their eyes. A procession formed in Eriahmys’s wake, Jehf humbly following just a step behind her, and by the time she achieved her goal, nearly half the city had come to see their patron. On the steps of the Oracle Shrine, the Witch of Cinders paused to address her people.

“Citizens of Eriahmys,” she began in a voice calm yet mysteriously amplified. Her hands flowed through the language of the deaf as she spoke. “I return to you now in time of crisis. One of my sister cities faces danger, and to them I must lend assistance. Go now back to your business, that my heart may rest with you in the succor of thriving life, despite this grim omen.”

Having said this, she proceeded into the Oracle Shrine, past its fountains and the solar arrays which powered its working, to its heart where aged wooden panels, ringed with curled ivy, told the mythic origin of the city of Eriahmys and its Witch of Cinders. Among them a series of large, circular mirrors spun around one another like the planets waltzing in orbit. The second largest of these she passed her hand over, murmuring softly to herself as she did so. The mirrored surface became fogged with steam and wavered, the light caught in it wobbling out of focus and back into clarity upon a new scene depicting another woman’s face, this one rich brown and snub-nosed compared to the tawny skin and sharp profile of the Witch of Cinders.

The white-haired woman in the mirror started, the sparkle of her raiment sending a spray of nervous light across her glassy surroundings. “Sister?” she asked softly.

“A messenger from Illymere,” the Witch of Cinders answered. She bade Jehf come forward, which he did.

The silver woman’s expression darkened. “Ah, then I share your mind, if not your order. I have also had a missive.” She stepped aside to reveal a woman of Jehf’s race, her mousy hair mussed by wind, her cheeks stained by sun.

“Ahlbrecht!” Jehf cried. “We made it at nearly the same time.”

“Only we two thus far,” Ahlbrecht said. “The Witch of Ice has just contacted the Witch of Storms—no messenger yet.”

“And all seemed well?” Eriahmys asked.

“She shared no new troubles, nor could I detect aught wrong with her,” the Witch of Ice answered. “I haven’t spoken to the others.”

“Check with Selemay next,” Eriahmys said. “I will handle the twins.”

“That may be a risk,” said the Witch of Ice.

“One which I am best prepared to bear,” Eriahmys affirmed. She wiped her sleeve across the mirror and its image faded. With precise motion she spun the orbiting mirrors until the two smallest ones—each only a handspan—faced her. She passed her hands over both and as before the reflections shook until they took on the shape of two new scenes, each of which Jehf recognized after a few moments of study: the Shrine of Inquisition and the House of Possibility in Illymere. No faces appeared there to greet them.

“And now I must set a dangerous quest for you, Jehf. These mirrors are more portal than view, but I dare not risk straying so far from my city under such uncertain circumstances. Such a mistake belongs to my forebear, and I would not repeat history, for if I were to fall, so too would all the Witching Cities. Yet I must speak to the Bright Witch and Dark Witch each, if we are to make progress.”

“I will go on your behalf,” Jehf said. “I only ask safe passage to return.”

Eriahmys smiled and placed a hand upon his brow. “Go with my blessing, Jehf—a measure of protection to guide you safely back to the hearth.”

A bloom of sunlight opened upon Jehf’s brow and melted to curl around his head as a circlet. It warmed him to his toes, and he stepped to the twin mirrors with a sense of pride.

“Seek the Bright Witch first. Often she is more coherent than Faux. Now, look deep into the mirror; focus all your intent upon it!”

He did as she bade and, feeling only a gentle push between his shoulders, fell through the left-hand mirror so that he stumbled out onto the floor of the Shrine of Inquisition. Glancing back, he saw a mirrored apparatus quite like the one in the Oracle Shrine in Eriahmys. Glimmering in the largest mirror’s surface was Eriahmys’s face.

“Allot yourself no more than an hour,” she suggested. “If you cannot find Vrai in that time, return here and we shall try the other.”

Jehf took her words to heart and swiftly made his way through the Shrine of Inquisition’s many tulle drapes and spindles of liquid crystal. In all the blank building he saw no sign of the Bright Witch, and so he passed out of the pale, rambling corridors into the Vrai Hectare.

Corpses littered the streets, most gaunt with illness and near-purple in their suffocation, but others appeared burnt or mutilated by human hands. What little life roamed the streets did so in robes of garnet whose hems swept the tight cobbles and whose sleeves hid their hands. Cowled and masked, the anonymous inhabitants of that ominous cloth gathered the strewn bodies into carts with professional apathy.

Jehf drew his wooly scarf over his nose, tying it tight there, and hurried away from the devastation toward the Faux Burg. As he neared the border of the two halves of Illymere, the stone and tile that made up the city’s architecture grew less white and more gray until at last he achieved the Burg and onyx replaced porcelain.

He stood before the bathhouses, now devoid of steam. A fetid stench rose from them, but Jehf pressed on into their columned depths regardless, for he had seen that the corners of the building had begun to dissolve, scattering into the air like so many flower petals, only to freeze in place, trembling.

Death filled every corner of the bathhouse, and its once-jade waters had turned a vile ochre, tainted by the pus oozing from the afflicted abandoned there. A strange, moist heat lingered in the air, and Jehf did not look too carefully at the floor, fearful of what he might discover in the slickness there. He came upon the Bright Witch as his mind began to writhe away from the oppression of the bathhouse and its hungry death, taking his sense with it.

Vrai knelt over the body of a child, weeping. Around her, the dissolution of the bathhouse had begun, each particle of its structure hanging like dust in a forgotten room, stalled, shivering. That this place had not already vanished, Jehf suspected, was the Witch’s doing.

“Bright Witch,” he rasped through the thick terror that lay on his tongue, “your eldest sister beckons in the Shrine and the House. Please, leave this place and speak to her, that she may help Illymere.”

The Bright Witch looked at him in silence and shook her head. When he persisted, she flung her hand at him. Wide linen strips grew from her open palm and encircled him, blanketing him in confusion as he struggled against the unexpected bindings. Breaking through, he found himself writhing upon the cold, marble floor of the House of Possibility, tangled in a thin, cotton sheet. He sat up, thrusting aside the white cloth.

The room lacked furniture or notable detail, seeming to be just a carving of a room, made from a single block of black marble. Four doorways promised a route out of the place, though a paper screen whose wood had been stained to sable hid the contents of the space beyond. Eriahmys’s circlet burned upon Jehf’s brow, and the skin at his back prickled with anxiety—the recommended hour had passed.

He chose a direction at random, thrusting aside one set of screen doors and entering a room identical to the first. This he moved through in a straight line and again he met a room cloning the previous. Three more times he proceeded thus, but on the fourth he halted in the heart of the new room and looked back the way he’d come. In so doing, he saw himself in repetition, each version looking away from him, at the next version.

Quickly Jehf looked to the door opposite the one he’d come through, but this remained sealed. Returning his attention to the open door, he saw his doppelgangers begin to move, some to run through the doors to left and right and some to run toward Jehf, vanishing when they crossed the threshold. Each Jehf returned to his room from the door opposite the one he’s used. Each remained confused. Four times Jehf watched this cycle repeat itself, the copies of room and man multiplying every time, but on the fifth cycle Jehf noticed one version of himself exited its room through the door it had entered by. As the other copies reentered their rooms in increasing terror, that Jehf’s room remained empty.

“The House of Possibility,” the true Jehf—which was what he believed himself to be—murmured as he ran toward his innumerable replications. Crossing the threshold, he came face-to-face with a duplication of himself and in the moment that their noses and fingers brushed, the air framed by the doorway rippled like water under the influence of a steady rain. The duplicate Jehf’s arms broke through the liquid surface, changing as they did to be not the ropey arms of Jehf but the slender, milk-white arms of the Dark Witch, her hands blackened by blood.

She embraced him around his waist and drew him through the doorway. Pulled through its liquid surface, Jehf came up through a rectangular pool of shallow water set into the heart of the House of Possibility, defying gravity as he fell upward and landed upon his feet beside it—a man falling backwards in reverse. The Dark Witch was not there, but another mirrored apparatus greeted him, the Witch of Cinders’ face turning in its largest mirror.

“Eriahmys!” Jehf cried with relief. He ran to the mirror and would have jumped through had not a hand on his wrist held him in check. Looking up, he met the glimmering eye of the Dark Witch whose smile encompassed the whole of her expression.

“Borrowing your sisters’ things?” she inquired of Eriahmys.

“Seeking to aid those in need,” replied the Witch of Cinders, unruffled.

The Dark Witch extended her hand to Jehf’s brow where Eriahmys’s circlet of sunlight still glowed. The Dark Witch did not touch the circlet and withdrew her hand after a moment. “And yet you’ve staked a claim,” she said. “You hoped to see me?”

“I hoped to see both of you,” Eriahmys replied. “Where is Vrai?”

The Dark Witch shrugged languidly and, without preamble, thrust Jehf bodily through the large mirror. He fell into Eriahmys’s arms, shocked by the warmth of both the Witch and her city; he hadn’t realized the chill his home had filled him with. “Did it start here?” Faux asked her eldest sister.

The Witch of Cinders considered Faux for a moment, frowning. “No. Yours was not the first covenant to be broken,” she said. “But I do believe you broke it. Faux, spare me your riddles: what has happened?”

The Dark Witch laughed with the mania of her forebear and said, “We can only be what we are, sister.” She thrust her fist toward them, and the tiny mirror that had looked onto the House of Possibility shattered, pooling as a fine dust at Jehf and Eriahmys’s feet.

Eriahmys studied the pile, Jehf still supported loosely in her arms. To him she said, “I am sorry, Jehf, but I don’t believe you can go back to Illymere anymore.”


	3. Eriahmys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahlbrecht and Lusa grapple with the crisis the Witching Cities face. When they rejoin Jehf and Eriahmys, the group of four gathers supplies in preparation to investigate the state of the long-dead Great City.

Ahlbrecht stood at attention beside the Witch of Ice—who insisted that Ahlbrecht call her Lusa, though Ahlbrecht could not bring herself to do so—as the Witch spoke to another of her siblings, the Witch of Winds. Wherever the orbiter resided in the city of Selemay, it apparently opened onto the sea, for the Witch’s hair wisped around her oval face into tangled confusion and the cry of gulls punctuated her every statement.

“I cannot say I have felt anything strange of late,” Selemay continued, “but I am kept so busy, it’s hard to say.”

“It could begin with something small,” the Witch of Ice pressed. “When I spoke to Ardis, she suggested that the first signs of dissolution would be no more than a ripple in the city’s thrum. Are you sure you haven’t felt anything? Dismissed it perhaps?”

The Witch of Winds contemplated this and for a moment seemed about to say something further, but she closed her mouth and shook her head. “No, I can’t be sure. Human friend, tell me, what did you see in Illymere?”

Ahlbrecht approached the small mirror, smallest save for the two the size of an open hand, and spoke in detail of the strangeness of the Bright Witch and the ferocity of the Dark Witch and the death in the streets guided by illness or ill intent. “The actions of man are not the only manner in which the city crumbles,” she added. “We saw buildings… evaporate into the air as if they had never been.”

Both Witches met these words with contemplative silence which the Witch of Winds at last broke, admitting, “There has been some sickness in the city of late. It is not uncommon for the sailors to take ill while they are journeying, so I thought nothing of it, but now that I put my mind to it, those who came back most recently have not healed, though it has been many days. But sister, I have upheld my covenant all my days, never wavering.”

“The covenants that allow our cities to be the guiding lights of mankind build atop one another,” said the Witch of Ice. “If a covenant made prior to yours was broken, then so too will yours be.”

“There is no justice in that.”

The Witches lapsed into silence again, which again the Witch of Winds broke. “Sister, you don’t believe I am the cause of this, do you?”

The Witch of Ice smiled in reassurance. “Selemay, it is not in your nature to do such a thing. You hold the greatest measure of our Mother’s kindness—I cannot imagine you would abandon your duty of charity for any reason. No, if you are impacted by this blight, then I must assume an earlier covenant has broken… yet I sensed no corruption in Ardis. She was as she ever is.”

“Cold and stubborn,” laughed the Witch of Winds, “and usually right.”

“Always right, she would say,” the Witch of Ice agreed. “Let me speak once more to Eriahmys.”

Selemay’s humor faded into a frown, and Ahlbrecht could hear the roar of the sea grow louder. “If Eriahmys has broken covenant, then we are all lost. She holds the first covenant and the best part of Mother’s power.”

The Witch of Ice nodded. “I find it hard to imagine as well. I will speak with her. Selemay, send word if things change in your city. I would have no harm befall any of us, but if Illymere is lost, then I would have it be only Illymere.” Saying farewell, she wiped the image from the mirror with her sleeve, frosting the edges of the glass.

Lusa pressed the tips of her fingers together and turned from the mirrored apparatus to face her city. They stood in a tower all of glass, and so it seemed she drifted over the city’s flat roofs and bulbous spires as she walked to the transparent wall and pressed her palm against it. Ahlbrecht admired the image of the Witch standing upon the horizon until Lusa interrupted the messenger’s long thoughts to say, “In truth, the situation is dire. I spoke as I did to Selemay because I have sensed a disturbance here in Lusa that I did ignore. The temperature in the city has been rising. Even now the sun chases away the cool air I have maintained here for centuries, and I find that, for the first time, I am powerless to defy that star.”

Ahlbrecht started at this news but swiftly regained her composure. “Then the broken covenant must lie with the Witch of Cinders.”

“That is a logical answer,” the Witch of Ice agreed, “but I cannot imagine it of Eriahmys. I think—”

A crack and a tinkling drew the two women back to the orbiting mirrors whereupon they saw that one of the twin mirrors had shattered, depositing a layer of silver dust on the tower’s ethereal floor.

“It did not go well,” the Witch of Ice said, scowling. She cast a glance back over her city, then took Ahlbrecht’s hand. The Witch’s skin was cool as marble but pulsing with life. “Ahlbrecht, I am going to take a risk.”

Ahlbrecht met Lusa’s bright eyes. “A risk, my lady?”

“There is another covenant, one my younger sisters do not know of, for Eriahmys shared its existence only with me. Whether it is Eriahmys that has broken covenant or our forebear, the source of the problem lies in the north. We must go to them.”

“What is the risk then, my lady?”

Lusa squeezed Ahlbrecht’s hands. “In leaving the city, I leave it undefended. I risk breaking my own covenant. But I cannot sit here and wait for death to descend upon us. Ahlbrecht, I am not human, but you are: is this the right answer? To go to the source?”

Ahlbrecht gazed at the otherworldly woman before her and heard herself answer with her own truth: “Action is the only answer.”

The Witch of Ice smiled and held Ahlbrecht in embrace briefly. She then turned to the orbiter and woke the image of the Witch of Cinders in the largest mirror. The Witch and Jehf stood in conversation, turned away from the mirrors, their voices too soft to hear, but this the Witch of Ice ignored as she pushed her hand through the mirror, still holding one of Ahlbrecht’s, and fell through it, drawing Ahlbrecht past the surface as she did. Without fully knowing how she had gotten there, Ahlbrecht stood in the Oracle Shrine, buffeted by the heat of Eriahmys.

“Sister,” said the Witch of Ice.

The Witch of Cinders turned, and her face went slack with shock. “Lusa, your covenant—”

“Crumbles from no action on my part. That leaves only your covenant… and Mother’s.”

Eriahmys’s eyes darkened. “Both are my duty. My covenant remains whole, but Mother’s… I have no innate sense of it. If it is the covenant that has broken, then we are all lost.”

“I do not accept that,” said the Witch of Ice. “Our covenants may have been predicated one upon another, but that is not to say that we cannot forge something anew and undo what has been done.”

“We are but part of our parent,” said the Witch of Cinders. “All we know, we have derived from mother. There can be no covenant that is not made in her shadow.”

“We have lived thousands of human lifetimes. Our experiences far outstrip those of these messengers who risked their only life to seek our aid. The power is no longer Mother’s; its ownership belongs to each of us, and so we may choose the manner to use it. I will not allow you to turn away from this, Eriahmys. You are the greatest part of Mother—her power, her wisdom, her kindness, everything that she was and had she gave to you in greater measure than to the rest of us, and it makes you prone to repeating her mistakes. In the depths of your fear of them, you shirk your duty—not to your city nor to your sisters, but to yourself. Act, Eriahmys, as these messengers have,”

So saying, Lusa stood before Ahlbrecht and placed her palm on the woman’s forehead. “A home they have lost,” the Witch said, “and so we take them, in their bravery, into our hearts.” Ahlbrecht felt a bloom of ice erupt from her forehead and swiftly melt away, settling as a fine, silver thread which spun lazily around the top of her head. “And with their help, we will solve this.”

The Witch of Cinders weighed her sister, who did not waver as she turned to meet Eriahmys’s eyes, her hands upon Ahlbrecht’s shoulders. Beneath them, Ahlbrecht felt warmth flood her cheeks.

At last Eriahmys said, “What do you suggest?”

Jehf and Ahlbrecht followed the two eldest Witches from the Shrine of the Oracle, out into the rich sunflower streets of Eriahmys where the Witch of Cinders looked so well-placed and the Witch of Ice seemed a dash of bright acrylic in an aged oil painting. Jehf, his head rimmed with the sun’s halo, and Ahlbrecht, her crown a quiet winter’s stream, spoke little between one another, sharing only the briefest reports of events as they had transpired thus far.

“You suspect me,” Eriahmys said, “as you should.”

“Reluctantly. You’re not one to take offense, I know, but I am sure it is an imposition even for you,” Lusa replied. “You seem yourself, if it is any comfort.”

“It is.”

They passed through a series of grand arches, each clad in bronze and copper, out through a field of solar collectors and thence to the aqueducts which flowed freely above the city. After about two miles, the aqueducts dipped down to release their water into subterranean filtration, from which it would flow into the homes of Eriahmys’s populace. Eriahmys led them up a thin stair onto an equally slim walkway running the length of the aqueduct, separated from the flow by a gauzy chain fence, shimmering like soap bubbles in sunlight. Where the aqueduct began to dip, the Witch of Cinders took them into a previously indiscernible portcullis built into the wall of a decorative arch. This brought them spiraling down through the arch’s columns, past the cobbled streets and hot pipeworks, through the permafrost and at last into a cool chamber formed from salt.

“Salt mines,” Lusa remarked in some surprise.

“They predate my arrival,” Eriahmys said, a small smile ghosting over her lips. “My Builder established a tiny settlement prior to seeking Mother and began to build economy through the trade of salt to other peoples scattered through the wilderness. We kept up the mines for a few years, but when the need passed, well.”

She extended her hand. Sconces set back into the walls sparked into life—not quite flame, but certainly not electric. The shimmering of the fairy lights dazzled the walls in glitter and revealed a chamber similar to a church or other large oratory. Pews had been carved from the ground, and the remnants of wine-colored cushions and drapery lay musty as they had surely done for centuries.

“Why bring us here?” Lusa asked.

“Because we must ascertain that it is Mother’s covenant that is broken, and the last reflection into her realm slumbers in these catacombs, forgotten by mankind. Jehf, Ahlbrecht, look past the pulpit—you see the ironwork there? I am sure the mechanism is long-rusted, but the lattice itself is surely brittle as well. Go together and follow that path. You should find along the way a scrying bowl and ewer, both of pewter. Fetch them here, while Lusa and I seek the second part in the adjacent hall.”

So saying, Eriahmys cupped her hands before the two messengers. In her palms a liquid light as of molten metal erupted and spat, stretching and shrinking and at last cooling into the shape of an ornate lantern, its core lit by the same ghost light which filled the sconces around the nave. Jehf took the lantern when she offered it. To Ahlbrecht he said, “Ready?”

As predicted, the delicate iron gate had rusted thoroughly, the hinges no longer able to swing. Ahlbrecht pressed a hand to the lattice of the gate and much of it crumbled at her touch. She wiped the oxidized dust from her fingers and took the small blade strapped to her belt—little more than a utility knife—and smashed its hilt against the rusted areas of the gate. In short time, she had sketched with punctures the shape of a hole both messengers could reasonably fit through. Jehf, who had taken hardy gloves on his journey to the north, completed the work, forcing the loosened oval of lattice from its place with his weight.

The pair stepped through the lattice into a darkened hall, the salt-dried air of which prickled their cheeks and noses. Jehf led them as lantern-bearer, and for a long way the hall provided nothing of interest, merely empty sconces and the occasional indistinct tapestry. When at last they encountered a door, they found it locked and of a sufficiently sturdy wood to prevent their entry. The next proved similar, but the third swung open at a touch, revealing a modest study, its books removed but its furniture intact. Nonetheless, they searched the room to no avail and subsequently the fourth, fifth, and eighth, finding the sixth barred and the seventh collapsed.

In the ninth lay the pewter scrying bowl, set in solemnity upon an altar of salt inlaid with gold. The bowl itself lacked particular decoration or ceremony, being no more than a wide, shallow bowl of dull gray. Jehf knew it by the heat rising upon his brow, and when they laid bare hands upon it, both messengers felt a peculiar warmth which denied the pleasant chill of the mine itself. Ahlbrecht took the bowl up, holding it to her chest like a friend as they walked.

The pewter ewer had been tucked away in the twelfth room, which the messengers judged to have been a pantry at one time. The ewer sat upon a shelf among a host of other forgotten containers, but as before Jehf recognized it for what it was, as though the light the Witch of Cinders had placed upon his brow had given him access to a previously unknown sense. Unlike the scrying bowl, the ewer held no unnatural warmth, but even so Jehf carried it in his arms like a child.

As they made their way back to the chamber in which they had begun, Ahlbrecht asked, “How do you find the Witch of Cinders?”

“Admirable. Wise. Kind, if taciturn. I know Illymere is lost now, Ahlbrecht, and imagining it gone, that we will never return home—it’s beyond my capacity. Yet at the same time, I know that in marking me as she did, Eriahmys made her city mine as well, that the bond is as strong as birthright. Somehow Illymere and Eriahmys are both my home now, with the same intensity, and so I find my heart mourns my home even as it revels in the marvel of being home. Does that make sense to you?”

“It does,” Ahlbrecht said. “I had not expected it, but I believe the Witch of Ice made me a part of Lusa, just as I have always been a part of Illymere. I feel as you do, Jehf, about that city and its Witch—she awes me in a manner I cannot fully declare. I remember a similar sense of divinity and worship when the Witch of Illusion would stroll the city, but there is something to Lusa that intensifies the feeling—a sense of homecoming, as you said.”

Jehf nodded his understanding. “I fear we have been enthralled,” he said with a smile, “and yet I cannot resent it.”

At this Ahlbrecht chuckled, saying, “Then surely this is a kind of love, too.”


	4. The Great City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lusa and Eriahmys investigate The Great City and finally grasp the nature of the WItching Cities' crisis.

The hall running parallel to that which Jehf and Ahlbrecht had taken was similarly closed by deteriorating ironwork which fell away like ash with a brush of Eriahmys’s fingers. She and Lusa crossed the threshold, their gowns untouched by the metallic powder. The sconces in the hall awoke in Eriahmys’s presence, flashing into ethereal light. Intuition told Lusa what this place had been and why it remained in hiding beneath the city; her own original temple also remained standing, though none had visited it in many human lifetimes. Many doors fringed off the hall ahead of them, but the Witches examined none of them, instead moving steadily toward their goal, even as the hall began to incline little by little.

“We of course seek pure water,” Eriahmys said. “And as with all of Mother’s matters, it must be specific.”

“A subterranean stream?”

“Just so. Its water seeps into the aqueducts in places, but the source itself is pure—it originates in Mother’s lands.”

Lusa trained her eye upon Eriahmys’s back. “That is a long way.”

“It is. A taste of the water will show you that I speak true. Her city—I can almost see it with that river on my lips.”

To this Lusa said nothing. An echo of memory lay in all their minds of what had once been, and Lusa did not doubt that Eriahmys sensed the past more keenly than her sisters could.

The way before them leveled and turned in a smooth sweep, nearly a spiral, which brought them to the end of the salt. Common stone took its place and a growing susurration became a bold song as the stream came into view, no more than a glimpse of rushing water among the rocks. A gap in the stone provided access to the water large enough for grasping hands, and to it Eriahmys knelt, a bulbous crystal bottle forming in her grip as she did. This she dipped into the water, careful to keep her sleeve from the surface, and when the bottle had filled she stood and turned to Lusa.

“If you wish, you may drink. Our bodies cannot contaminate it, but mind your clothing.”

Lusa did as her sister suggested, taking only a palmful of water from the stream and sipping it from her cupped hands. The effect Eriahmys had described was immediate—a quick impression, like the flash of a photograph, that encompassed not only the vision of the Great City but also the feeling of it, what it had been like to live there. The effect passed just as swiftly, and, though reeling from the impact, Lusa found she could not recollect the details. Trying to do so only pushed them farther away. She caught Eriahmys’s eye.

“If we pour this water from the ewer to the scrying bowl, we should see her city as it exists today,” Eriahmys said. “Like using the orbiter to commune with one another, I think we will know what it is we see in its truth.”

“I believe it,” said Lusa, “and I do not think any of us, corrupted, could touch this water without consequence. No. I believe we are all tainted now, but only because our forebear has broken all of her promises.”

“Can a dead woman break a promise?”

“Can a Witch truly die?”

Eriahmys’s lips quirked. “Let us return. Our human friends have surely finished their task.”

Ahlbrecht set the scrying bowl upon the pulpit’s dais and sat on one of the salt-hewn pews. Jehf, standing by the bowl, merely held the ewer as his eyes roved over the dim space.

“Shall I pay you a drachma, to hear your thoughts?” joked Ahlbrecht.

“They’re not quite words,” Jehf replied after a pause. “This place is very old, and well-preserved for the age. I feel as though… I’m looking into a history, an image or hologram. Do you not feel it?”

“I can’t say I do. I feel that we sit inside a relic, but I think that’s not quite what you mean.”

Jehf nodded. “I feel changed, Ahlbrecht, and so changed I see a new world. It cannot be how all the citizens live their lives—it’s not how we saw Illymere.”

Ahlbrecht mulled that thought over and suggested, “Perhaps it is. We are both Illymere natives; it was all we knew until this quest. How can we say that the Illymere we saw was at all similar to that which visitors saw? The Eriahmys you see differs, I think, from the one I perceive, and is it not different too from the one you understood when you first entered the city?”

“That’s true. You’ve always been a surprisingly keen philosopher,” he said, making Ahlbrecht laugh.

The Witch of Cinders and Witch of Ice returned a short time later, the former carrying an odd bottle of bright water. The Witch of Cinders complimented them on their success, and the Witch of Ice accepted the ewer from Jehf, who took a place beside Ahlbrecht to observe.

Eriahmys filled the ewer with the water from her strange bottle. “Do you wish to look, or shall I?”

“Together,” said Lusa, “if we may.”

“Certainly. We pour together while gazing into the bowl.”

“Ahlbrecht, Jehf, do not interrupt. The ritual will be delicate in the mind,” Lusa said, and the messengers murmured their acquiescence.

Side by side, the Witch of Cinders and Witch of Ice took position over the scrying bowl, both holding the handle of the ewer. So paired, their symmetries became apparent, as did their individualisms—shared height and like movement against contrasting coloration and unrelated features. The Witches tipped the ewer, its shimmering water spilling forth into the scrying bowl and gliding around its curvature with peculiar cohesion. The water settled into perfect stillness as the last drop fell, and the Witches bent over it, though they did not lower the ewer.

To Ahlbrecht and Jehf, it seemed that little happened save that the innate light of the water intensified, casting vague shadows upon the Witches’ faces that were not echoed in the smooth surface of the water. But within the bowl the Witches saw a land long forgotten, its ruins little more than small disruptions in the landscape; and yet that landscape seemed so gray, sapped of color and life, its vegetation paltry. Within it there lingered one structure—a hut built of sticks, about the shape and size of a sitting human being, though one of unusual height. It was unoccupied by anything at all, and as the Witches studied it, the vision changed, revealing a shift in the landscape—heights inappropriate to a ruin so long abandoned.

There, a building of common construction, its roof sharply tapered against the snow, and past it another, and so another, and fourth, fifth, sixth, and inhabitants for each, bundled against the snow in furs and leathers and down-filled coats. As the vision broadened, Lusa and Eriahmys understood that the first covenant had indeed been broken, for an entire town had been built upon the ruins of the Great City and in so being, the Great City had finally been colonized.

The Witches pulled back from the scrying bowl with a swimmer’s gasp and turned to one another, lowering the ewer. “I will explain to our sisters,” said Lusa.

“Ardis will seek to remove them, by force. It will not restore the covenant.”

“No, but she will see that when her anger subsides. I will return to Lusa to ensure their faith when I speak to them, but I mean to be at your side, Eriahmys. Do not proceed recklessly.”

Ahlbrecht stood. “My lady, where you go, I too shall go, to be whatever use I may.”

The Witch of Ice greeted this news with a smile, and, meeting Ahlbrecht in the nave, took her hand. “Let us make haste, then.” The pair proceeded from the salt mines, back to the Oracle Shrine.

Left alone, Eriahmys approached Jehf and placed a hand upon his shoulder. “Friend Jehf, I believe we will ask much of you and Ahlbrecht before this is done. I cannot promise that you will find a satisfactory end to this, either. The Witching Cities will not be the same.”

Jehf turned to face her, taking her long hands in his. “Eriahmys, having come this far, I cannot conceive of stopping now. Whatever can be saved, I will help you save. Do not doubt that.”

Eriahmys laughed lightly. “Then I will count upon you, Jehf. There is much to do.”


	5. Covenants New and Old

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lusa and Eriahmys consult with Ardis, and the Witches identify both how they might avert the crisis and what they want for their own futures.

A third messenger had fulfilled her quest and stood now at Ardis’s side, greeting Ahlbrecht through the mirrored apparatus with a wiggle of her fingers. In Lusa’s crystal tower, Ahlbrecht could feel that the cool of the city had retreated somewhat since their departure, and it seemed to her that the tower itself was somehow smaller, slender like an icicle in late season. Past Ardis and the third messenger—Camrys—a sea of tiny lights, some streaking through darkness and some sparkling in a vast array of colors, stood against a gathering night. The details of Ardis and Camrys’s immediate surroundings Ahlbrecht could not discern, but she thought she heard a hum through the mirror.

“You move too slow,” Ardis said, scowling. “Decisiveness is the better part of wisdom.”

“Only with sufficient information,” Lusa replied with straining calm.

“What more information do we need? A colonizer has arrived, and so we must remove them. Would that Eriahmys had seen fit to share news of this covenant with her sisters—we might have prevented this.”

Camrys pouted in Ahlbrecht’s direction, but Ahlbrecht did not react. Lusa said, “It is too late for what-ifs, and removing the settlement would do nothing to restore the covenant. It is broken. Another solution is needed, Ardis. We need your help for that.”

Ardis sighed with impatience. “Of course. Difficult, but not impossible. Have you considered forging new covenants? It will do little to save the cities as they are today, but it may save lives.”

“Yes, if we can build without reference to Mother’s work, but it will be tricky to hold in the mind.”

“And it will not save Illymere,” Ardis intoned, causing Camrys to start. “The witch of Illusion hardly seems to be in a state to make promises.”

“Yet we will try,” said Lusa.

Ardis waved a hand, as if dissipating smoke. “Very well. I will think on an adequate covenant that we might use. But, a covenant requires two, Lusa.”

Lusa placed a hand on Ahlbrecht’s shoulder. “I know.”

“Camrys,” Ahlbrecht said, startling the listeners. “Put your trust in Ardis.” She held the younger woman’s eyes.

“I think I’m out of the loop,” Camrys said with a sigh.

“What refreshing honesty,” Ardis said dryly. “Well, to urgent matters first. Lusa, I will send word once I’ve thought up an answer. Set Cinders to the task, too. She is, after all, the greatest part of Mother.” This last Ardis said with a sneer, and her mirror winked back into commonplace silver.

Lusa sighed and surprised Ahlbrecht by slouching. Seeing her expression, Lusa laughed and squeezed the shoulder her hand still rested on. “It is time to remove the veil. Come sit with me, Ahlbrecht, and I shall share with you the full mind of we Witches.”

She led Ahlbrecht two floors down to an icy nook which formed a covered balcony perched over the city’s grand arboretum where a panoply of plant species grew healthy and free within the safety of Lusa’s care. Plush, jewel-colored cushions and soft, pale blankets filled the space, and as Ahlbrecht settled among them, taking place across from Lusa, she noted that some of the trees below had begun to lose their vibrant hue, leaves crackling.

Lusa followed her gaze and said, “The city is slipping, as you see. There are many legends about us, I know, and many hold truth, but this is the heart of the matter, Ahlbrecht: the power of we Witches comes from our bond with humanity. The woman we call Mother some legends remember as the Great Witch, and she alone held power in her own right.

“Thousands of human lifetimes ago, a human sought out the Great Witch, earned her trust, and formed covenant with her, creating the first Witching City, remembered now only in half-forgotten legend as a grand utopia whose greatness shone light upon all humanity and whose destruction meant a blight upon the species. The city’s destruction came about due to the Great Witch’s actions. Her covenant required two things of her: that the city never be invaded, and that it never be colonized. She left it for a time and in her absence the city was invaded, and so it fell to ruin. She subsequently remained within the ruins to ensure that it would never be colonized, mourning forever its loss. In doing so, she ensured that the covenant held a portion of its power still.

“It was from this end that my sisters and I were born. When a human sought the Great Witch among her ruins, he did so with the image of her lost city in mind. She summoned up the remaining power of that first covenant and used it to split herself into parts and form a new one with him—that is how Eriahmys was born, both the city and the Witch. The rest of us came to be in like fashion as the Second Builder brought more dreamers to our Mother, until at last Illymere, one Witch as two and two Witches made one, was born, consuming the rest of Mother’s power.”

Here Lusa paused, collecting her thoughts as she looked upon her city. Ahlbrecht looked out over it, too, and imagined how Lusa must feel to know the city’s doom as intimately as she did.

Resuming, Lusa said, “Or so we say. But in truth, she was never gone. Our Mother did not split herself haphazardly but did it by halves, and so Eriahmys is half of her, and I am a quarter. Ardis is an eighth, Selemay a sixteenth, and Illymere—together they are a thirty-second of our Mother. This perhaps allows you to imagine the raw power of the Great Witch, but it should also tell you this, Ahlbrecht—our Mother is not truly dead. A thirty-second of her lingered in the air around the first city’s location after Illymere’s birth. Born in this way, we exist by Mother’s covenant alone, carried upon the innumerable shoulders of our Builders’ lineages. Because we exist only through them, the covenants are the source of all our power.”

Lusa looked hard into Ahlbrecht’s eyes, but Ahlbrecht had already caught the significance. “If you are to save any of the cities, you must do it before all covenants are dissolved. Your power will vanish entirely then.”

“And ourselves, also. So we come to it: your kind has lived long under the impression of our grandeur, our divinity, our unimpeachable perfection—but these are all illusions, Ahlbrecht. The Great Witch’s last secret is that she was simply a person. An entirely different kind of person than your species, yes, but a person nonetheless, and as the gestalt of humanity and the Witch, we shades of her power are even more people in the sense familiar to you. In private we slouch, we cry, we struggle; together we argue, we comfort, we influence—and this we hide from humanity because it is better for the covenant, for the city, for the Builders’ descendants, to believe we are something beyond. It creates a bedrock for the kind of belief and trust which sustains our power. Humanity can break the covenant as surely as a Witch can, but always the bulk of humanity has believed in the vision of the cities, and always they have put in their own work toward creating that vision. And so, we have always been able to uphold the covenant and deliver upon that promise.”

She reached across the space and took Ahlbrecht’s hand. “Ahlbrecht, we cannot repair the covenants that exist. We cannot even make new covenants similar to them, for those will crumble under the weight of prior promises broken. We must form entirely new, entirely separate covenants if we are to hold on to power, if we are to ensure survival. We cannot sustain—we must survive and evolve into a new role, and to build those covenants, we need humanity—no, that is not enough—_I _need _you_.”

Ahlbrecht flushed, her hand seeming to steam in Lusa’s cool palm. “My lady—”

“_Lusa_.”

“Lusa. I believe I would follow you into destruction if you asked it, though I can hardly explain why in coherent terms. What do you ask of me?”

“Partnership. The unbreakable kind. I don’t know what would be best to promise, Ahlbrecht, but I know in my heart that I can trust you, and so I do. I mean to share with you the person who is Lusa, rather than the Witch of Ice, and I mean to be your companion all your life. I mean to save whatever can be saved with you, and I mean for that saving to include the both of us as well. I mean to build a life with you, if not a world, and in so doing fulfill the dream of each our hearts. In the Witchly terms in which I have robed myself for long millennia, we call this a covenant, but I think in human terms you call it love. Will you do this with me, Ahlbrecht?”

It seemed to Ahlbrecht then that the silvery icicle crown and the sleek glittering gown were little more than props, well-tailored but ill-suited to Lusa’s shivering frame. It seemed that what Ahlbrecht had mistaken for austerity and grandeur in Lusa’s expression were in fact uncertainty and the kind of leadership born of the willingness to be wrong, rather than the certainty of being right. In seeing these things, Ahlbrecht ceased to see Lusa as the Witch of Ice—which suddenly sounded no more than an opulent title—and instead to see her as a human being. So seeing, she pulled Lusa into her arms and, the icicle crown melting away as soon as she did, said into Lusa’s hair, “Of course I will.”

In Eriahmys, a similar conversation took place, with similar result, though it was Jehf who found himself in the tight embrace of a strong-armed woman, and rather than the quiet and happy tears which rolled down the face of the Witch of Ice, the Witch of Cinders laughed long and hard, all the lights in her city sparkling with it, as she had not since she and the Second Builder raised her city’s first building.

Ardis’s message rang out from the mirrored orbiters in each of the Witching Cities two days later, pinning each Witch to attention and sending a shiver through the cities’ populaces, whose suspicions that something was wrong solidified with the rise and fall of Ardis’s grave voice.

“Protect the Witching Cities with a covenant of life, not structure. Think not of the cities at all, only of the safety of the people. Erase your city from you mind—think only of your community. Find a Partner, not a Builder, and erase the building from your mind—think only of human bonds and the power therein.”

In Eriahmys, the Witch of Cinders nigh immediately appeared before her people, a quelling speech—a reaffirmation of protection and growth—settling the pins-and-needles fear that had begun to telegraph across her skin from the human mass. In Lusa, the Witch of Ice shared the sober truth with her citizens, confirming their trust with her honesty and already in-progress plan. In Ardis, the Witch of Storms had already hardened her people’s resolve against the blow, and so they merely paused in their daily activities, determined to uphold the city no matter the Witches’ results. In Selemay, the pronouncement came as a shock and the Witch of Winds rocked with the blow, spending days subsequently visiting each person individually to offer succor and encouragement. And in Illymere, half-dissolved and shattered, a miasma of death staining her once-stark spires, Faux raised her head from the cup in which lay all that remained of Vrai, and smiled.


	6. The Witch of Illusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Witches and their Partners form a new covenant, breaking the old. In the wake of the breaking, the fifth Witch arrives.

In all the long history of the Witching Cities, no Witch had appeared before the citizens of another Witch’s city. It was Lusa’s idea to break with the tradition, and Ardis contributed new looking-glass, the Witches stringing the massive ovals of liquid silver together and suspending them in their cities where the citizens might easily see them. Vrai and Faux none of the Witches could reach, and so Illymere alone did not see the new covenants formed.

In Eriahmys, the Witches of Ice and Cinders stood together at the summit of a sun-soaked stair, Ahlbrecht and Jehf diminutive at their sides. In Selemay, the Witches of Storms and Winds waited upon a fine-silt beach, the gray ocean behind rolling thoughtfully, Camrys at Selemay’s side and an individual from Ardis called Henza at Ardis’s, as strict in expression as Ardis herself. Ahlbrecht thought the arrangement made sense—she suspected Camrys would be happier with Selemay. Like Ahlbrecht and Jehf, Camrys and Henza had been marked by their Witches, a wisping white fog flitting around Camrys and an occasional crackle of blue electricity setting Henza’s fine hair upright.

To all four Partners-to-be, the Witches buzzed with an invisible energy; it sometimes seemed that they wavered like the air above a road under extreme heat. Though the citizenry did not see this effect, they did share with the Partners-to-be a taut feeling in their stomachs. Not uncomfortable exactly, it felt as if each among them bore a string which led to the Witches’ raised hands and these strings, now pulled, could not entirely be resisted. Some among the crowd leaned back in subconscious resistance while others listed slightly forward as the ceremony began.

Unified, the Witches’ voices spoke aloud, “In your mind, there is a life lived full and happy, marred only by those usual bickerings of a life lived among people. In your mind, there is companionship both intimate and broad, a people, a culture, a community, growing and collaborating and creating as only people do. In your mind I see this, and I offer you covenant.”

The Partners-to-be lacked organization; the Witches had refused rehearsal and encouraged only meditation—clear minds that would not remember cities that once were nor the cities that surrounded them, and instead would see only a desired community, a people they wished to cultivate. And so it was Jehf who stepped forward first, saying, “In my mind there is a people defined by camaraderie. They are builders, yes, but not only of things, also of each other. They are humble, yes, but this is because they believe in ambition, in the right of an individual to seek their own happiness, in the freedom and space needed to achieve that happiness. A society that supports one another. A community that comes together for those in need even as it allows the singular to reach their full potential. If this is what you offer me, Eriahmys, Witch of Cinders, then I offer you in return a home—a place in that community.”

Eriahmys took his hand, grinning in a way that set his pulse racing, and said only, “It is done.”

Her crown of flame burst, the sparks scattering, a ring of tiger lilies taking its place, glowing like embers. Her raiment, too, changed, shedding the brass armor in favor a sleek ash-gray tunic. The base of her gown fell away piecemeal as charred wood does, revealing carbon-dark pants whose wide legs disguised sturdy boots beneath. The circlet of sunlight which surrounded Jehf’s head shimmered and shattered, leaving glittering sparkles of light to fall like a cape around him as it reformed into a shining torque.

The pair remained so posed, grasping one another’s hands, as Ahlbrecht caught up Lusa’s with urgency. “With you I would build a strong people—a people able to weather all of life’s deepest cuts with aplomb and determination. For them, no winter will be too cold, no summer too hot, for their ingenuity and will shall see them out of any trouble. Protected and protecting, they will march into a future of their own making, inhibited only by the limitations of their own minds. And so uninhibited they shall be that I will say no more of them, ‘lest I place my own expectations upon their nascent community. Lusa, do this with me. Let us march into the future together, as strong and willful as our people shall be. Can you see it?”

Lusa squeezed Ahlbrecht’s hands saying, “Of course I can, dear one,” and in the saying the ice sloughed from her gown, puddling and streaming down the steps. Her long hair twisted up into a series of braids which coiled onto her head, a burst of tiny forget-me-nots decorating them. A fine shawl, twinkling like frosted snow, settled around her shoulders, complementing a simple navy shift paired with tall boots. As Jehf’s had, so too did Ahlbrecht’s circlet dissipate into shimmer, melting down to a fine torque laid against her collar.

Across the looking-mirror, Henza avowed to Ardis their desire for a land of innovation, of logic—yes—but a logic wise and useful enough to encompass empathy. They spoke of a craft-gifted people whose clever hands would demonstrate the full potential of humanity’s genius, and Ardis, grinning broad and holding Henza’s hands in her own, accepted their proposal, transforming in the doing her own brass armor away from the regal paladin she had once presented and instead to an artists’ garb in the same black and gold coloration. Her spiked crown too vanished as the electricity disrupting Henza’s hair crackled and discharged down to a faintly humming torque of copper.

Selemay and Camrys looked at one another shyly for a time before Camrys spoke. “My dreams are more humble,” she nearly mumbled. “I could wish for greatness of many kinds, I suppose, but I think I prefer peace. A hearth, a home, a people who can trust in those things, who can create them. Does that make sense to you?”

Selemay nodded.

“If that people could carry home with them anywhere, I think that would be wonderful, but I also would want that to mean that they could build any home in any place, if you follow me. I think I would want to be part of a community that needs no unity but kindness and patience, that celebrates variety and curiosity, because home can be about that too. Does that make sense?”

Selemay nodded again, and her effervescent robes unfurled, becoming no less ornate but much more colorful, the gauzy drapery replaced with a soft, more tailored ensemble.

“I guess that’s all there is,” Camrys said. “Should we do that?”

Selemay stifled a giggle. “Well, yes. I think we should.” A ring of braided rushes encircled her head, and Camrys gasped as the fog she had worn condensed, raining her in chilly dew drops which then ran together to form a hollow crystal torque.

The Witches stepped forward, their Partners taking place at their sides. Speaking out to the erstwhile citizens, Eriahmys said, “On this day a new covenant is formed. Grasp it in your heart and follow it—whichever best suits you. The covenants of the Witching Cities are no more.”

All felt the snap of the invisible threads’ severing. A collective gasp and a silence settled over the four cities and likely would have continued for some time had not a raucous laugh rung out from the Shrine of the Oracle, followed by the shattering of glass. Eriahmys stiffened and threw up a hand as a spike of shadow erupted from the Shrine. It exploded in an amber spray before her, and the laughter faded away breathlessly.

To all the cities’ peoples Lusa called out, “To your homes! Our strength is tested—be quick now!”

Faux unfolded from the massive mirror suspended in Eriahmys, darkness swirling through the silver as the Dark Witch leaned out into the city, giddy. “So bold! Foolish sisters? Clever sisters.” Her voice seemed to shift as she spoke, and when she said the next, it came in two voices from one throat. “So rude not to invite us.”

She leapt from the mirror then, tumbling through the air to land before Eriahmys and Lusa. Faux had changed—taller than she had ever been before and clad in an outfit built from swan feathers dyed black. Her face swirled into featureless nothing periodically, coming back weeping or laughing each time it did, the features otherwise unchanged.

Ardis and Selemay arrived through the grand mirror, which wobbled with their passage, and they and their Partners took position, flanking their youngest sister. “What have you done?” Ardis snapped.

“Mourned and wept and ate and consumed and reveled, perhaps? Hard to say, hard to say, hard to—” The alternating expressions vanished, only to be replaced by those same features in an expression of gravitas. “I am Illymere.”

Illymere smiled into her sisters’ reactions of disgust and horror. Ahlbrecht, Jehf, and Camrys understood the implication only a moment later.

“What about the city?” Camrys demanded.

The unified Illymere fixed her with a quizzical gaze. “Forsaken your home too? Embraced your home anew? Hm. The city is there, but not there. Dissolved and dissolving but the people are there, yes? The city is not the people, but the people are the city, and I am not the people, but I am the city, so it is and is not.”

Ardis sneered. “What do you intend, Witch of Illusion? What purpose have you now?”

“Left me out but included me, didn’t you, Ardis?”

Selemay stepped forward. “You had a choice. Ardis told you what we meant to do. We reached out, but you never answered. We tried. You had a choice, and you made it; don’t try to twist the situation to your purpose.”

A flicker of contempt passed through Illymere’s visage before her face resumed its fluctuations. “As I said. I don’t approve. Not at all. Let humans do human things. Let Witches do Witch things.”

She lashed out at Lusa. A twin shower of fire and electricity greeted the lancing shadows, thwarting them. Nonetheless, Lusa flinched and Selemay took a step back. Illymere giggled. Lusa and Selemay laid their hands upon the Partners and fled, dragging all four in tow, as flame and lightning combined to swirl about Illymere who laughed through darkness into the storm.

They took refuge in the marble hall of a nearby library, swimming in among like-minded Eriahmys citizens. Jehf and his two Illymere-born companions felt a buzzing around their brows, almost electric but dense with pressure.

Henza said, “As I understand it from Ardis, Faux and Vrai were always one being. I imagine it wasn’t too much of a jump for them to become one person.” Camrys greeted this statement with a loss of color.

“Illymere is more powerful,” Lusa said grimly, “and less stable. The nature of the Witch of Illusion was always to be in opposition, though not in conflict. Containing the two parts of that binary in one form destabilizes the mind of the remaining one, as we’ve seen.”

Selemay looked over the heads of the clustered citizenry to the door where the crackle and roar of the Witches’ battle could be heard muffled but reverberating. “She may have done it to preserve Vrai in some way.”

“We can’t leave them alone out there,” said Jehf.

“We’d be a liability,” Henza countered. “Pawns for Illymere to use against our Witches.”

“But, you’re not entirely wrong,” said Selemay, hugging her arms to herself. “Idleness serves us not at all. Eriahmys and Ardis should be enough to contain her, but… this is a family matter.”

“No, we should join them,” Lusa affirmed. To the Partners she said, “Wait here.”

The Partners resisted this command, but Selemay and Lusa would not be swayed. When the Partners finally submitted to the Witches’ will, Lusa and Selemay left the library and returned to the place they had last seen their sisters. The plaza there had become blackened and burned, and the sky above had darkened in places with storm and in others with unnatural darkness that defied the lights of the golden city. Some segments of the architecture seemed to dissolve into the atmosphere, hovering like sun-caught dust, and in the distance a flash of fire and lightning showed that their sisters had moved on, into the once-ribald open marketplace.

Lusa and Selemay took off swiftly after them, finding their siblings in short time. To their relief neither Eriahmys nor Ardis appeared harmed nor indeed fatigued, but Illymere lacked any sign of disruption as well, though the angrier of nature’s forces stabbed at her eagerly. The places where Illymere’s darkness touched began to dissolve, as though Illymere had somehow absorbed the power of the breaking covenants, accelerating their destruction.

A breath of hesitation passed through the battle, and into it stepped Lusa, ice chips swirling about her as a wall of glacier-blue drew up as a cage around Illymere. Stepping to Eriahmys and Ardis’s sides, Lusa whispered, “The Partners and your people are tucked away in safety. How goes this?”

“Poorly,” said Ardis with a twist of her lips. “Illymere is stronger than she ought to be, more resilient.”

The fresh ice shattered and a crackle of Ardis’s electricity ensnared Illymere in its place. Selemay joined her sisters in the respite. “If we strike together?”

“We’d have to do it carefully” said Eriahmys. “Ardis and I have been trying to contain her in safety, but…”

The electricity fizzled away, and Illymere strode toward her sisters, laughing in two voices. “Sisters, Witches, so hasty, and so _slow_. A riddle, yes? Confused, are you? ‘How did my sister become so strong? How is this possible?’ The little ones thought Faux did wrong, no? Always they thought this. Faux the liar, Faux the black one, Faux the false one. But we, I, are the Witch of Illusion. Would that not be a lie also?”

“You’re getting more coherent,” Ardis replied in a sardonic tone. “I don’t suppose you’re calming down?”

“Yes and no, no and yes—do you remember Mother? Do you remember what she was in the end? Or do you only remember her as she was in the beginning?”

Eriahmys and Selemay flinched at this, prompting a burst of laughter from Illymere. “Yes yes _yes!_ We hoped you might. We thought, surely, surely we were not the only fools who noticed the cost of making us for that ungrateful man and his silly, ungrateful friends?”

Lusa shook her head. “You were all that was left of her, Illymere. All the good that remained went to you.”

“No,” said Eriahmys, and Illymere’s darkness subsided, her predatory pose softening. “That was after us. Ardis, you do remember, don’t you?”

Ardis held her tongue for only a moment. “Yes. When she gave me all that remained of her wisdom, she became foolish, but by then she was already less wise, less kind, less strong, than she had been when you and Lusa were born. She merely stripped away the last of it in that moment.”

“I am the last of her kindness,” said Selemay, grim. “She became mean, if not cruel, when I was born.”

“Just so, just so!” crowed Illymere. “Then what were _we_? A binary opposition, a contradiction, and the dregs, just dregs—powerful dregs, true, but so empty of what she had promised. Did you not marvel at the pragmatism of our people? Did you not wonder at their determination, to seek you as they did? Did you not think them made of steel, to turn away from their home so resolutely, all four—though one died, poor soul didn’t make it far before Vrai found him—”

“Vrai?”

“Vrai! The white one, the true one, the good one, as they thought, as they said, but as _we _said, as our Builders said, we are the Witch of _Illusion_, so why should we be what we seemed? Why should our contradictions be even, clear, logical? Cannot Vrai speak truth on _some _things and Faux on others? Cannot Vrai be cruel in_ some _ways and Faux good and pure in others? We made a clean, delineated city! It was so clear, _so _clear, where the lines lie—but we are the Witch of Illusion, and poor citizens of Illymere, they did not see through it.”

“I know you checked each other,” said Eriahmys. “I visited the origin many times after the Second Builder’s passing, and in the rustle of its gray trees I heard Mother’s will, her intent. You were meant to hold each other in place.”

“We did. For so long we did, but, Eriahmys, you retired from the public eye too soon. You did not experience the shifting of the world for as long as we. Human beings live in cycles, cycles not of their choosing. Our city was cruel in this way, for the black-and-white vacillation of humanity was the very picture of our city, and our city was a lie. Together, together we might have lived that way, but separately, it was pain. And we were separate, after so many years shaped by the Builders’ children. Vrai grew tired, and Faux distracted by the performance of their shared falsehoods. And so I, Vrai, I, Vrai, Vrai left the city.

“Yes, she-I-she did as Mother had done, and Vrai journeyed to the origin, Eriahmys, though you did not notice, and she sought Mother’s revenant and consumed it. Years ago, Eriahmys. You, like the Builder who thrust his responsibility upon you, have been so negligent of the origin, so secure in Mother’s watchful ghost, upholding its covenant in perpetuity—you did not even notice she was gone, did not notice another people come the moment the great evil that had scared them away for so long was _gone_, tangibly so, and you did not see.”

Illymere dropped her pointing hand, falling stoic once more, both fluctuating faces showing the death in her. “Vrai returned to Illymere swiftly, and Faux soon understood what had been done, but they did not know of the first covenant. They did not know to tell you of the unprotected lands, and so many years later, the covenants are all shattered because Vrai wished to be a little more whole than she had been raised to be. It is all of our sin, and I, I am three, not two, and now, are you still confused?”

All the city seemed still and dead in the silence that followed this pronouncement. The hidden people held their breath in dread, and the Witches processed their shock alone. With the finality of a coffin closing, Eriahmys said, “No.”

Fire spun up about Illymere, turning blue in its heat, the stonework beneath her feet melting into volcanic ooze as the Witch of Illusion’s initial laughter changed to high shrieking. Darkness whipped out from the fire in desperate tendrils, quickly consumed by the brightening flames, and when the screaming stopped, the fire still burned, down through the street into the earth far below, becoming a deadly well in the midst of the city. When the inferno blew out, Lusa cast ice over the top of the molten column, swiftly cooling the lava to a tall pillar of obsidian. She turned cold eyes upon Eriahmys who still stood grave, hand extended.

As if it provided an explanation, Eriahmys said, “The remnant of the Great Witch, combined with both halves of Illymere, is still less than the power I was given.”

“You killed her,” said Selemay.

“She didn’t want to,” said Ardis.

“But she did.”

Eriahmys turned away. “I will tell the citizens it is safe to come out, to rebuild.” She marched toward the Shrine of the Oracle, and her remaining sisters followed behind at a short distance.


	7. Among the Ruins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the Witches confront their sibling, the Partners demonstrate a characteristic lack of patience.

The Partners stared after Lusa and Selemay long after they’d departed from the library.

“I mislike this idleness,” Ahlbrecht griped. “Surely we can be of more use than this.”

Speaking to himself, Jehf said, “Perhaps we can be. Eriahmys told me of this city’s history through yesterday’s evening. She didn’t mention a path to the first city, but… she said the first building she ever raised for herself, rather than for someone else, now lies outside the city limits. I think it is the place I found her when we first met.”

“A path to the first city?” asked Camrys.

“I think she must have one,” Jehf replied. “If it was her charge, wouldn’t she?”

“It’s logical,” Henza agreed. “Why this line of thought?”

“I think we should go there,” said Jehf, “and take that path.”

“And do what?” Camrys asked.

“Tell the people there the history of the land they live on, I suppose. I’m not sure if it will help anything, but… something feels unresolved still. Perhaps it is more for us than for them, but I feel they should know something of what has happened.”

The others contemplated this idea, and it was Camrys who accepted it first. “Well I don’t know if it’ll accomplish anything tangible, but it’s better than waiting for something to happen,” she said.

“Perhaps telling them of the covenant would include them in it?” Henza mused. They laughed abruptly, saying, “No, it doesn’t work that way, does it? Still, I must agree with Camrys. I’d rather not wait here like an anxious spouse.”

Once Ahlbrecht indicated her consent as well, Jehf said, “Then I will guide you. Be careful now. We don’t know what state the city is in.”

The Partners pushed through the crowd and passed from the library into a series of side streets, jogging to Eriahmys’s cabin outside the city walls. The path from the cabin to the Witches’ origin lay beneath the cottage’s hearth. Henza located it moments before the Partners gave up on the effort, and it required three of them to move enough of the hearthstone to access the passage below.

The group walked a short distance through the adjoining passage, though it appeared to wander in the wrong direction. Below ground, the northern chill’s reach was reduced, and the events of the day felt far away. Coming to the end of the meandering subterranean path, they discovered a large, ovoid mirror identical in material to those they had seen perched upon the mirrored orbiters tucked within each of the Witching Cities. In the light of a lantern Jehf had procured from the cottage, the inert mirror reflected their surprised faces and the darkness of the passage behind.

“It must be a portal,” Jehf said. “We’ve traversed these before.”

“With the Witches’ help,” said Camrys. “Ardis had to do something to the mirror in the House of Justice to even see into the other mirrors, never mind send me through to Selemay.”

“Witch magic,” Henza said with disappointment. “We’d need one of them with us to use this.”

Thoughtfully, Ahlbrecht approached the mirror. “That would seem logical, but have any of us tried to use the orbiters ourselves?” She glanced at the others for confirmation, and indeed none had made such an attempt.

“I didn’t even know they existed until all of this started,” Camrys said.

“Indeed. There was rarely cause to visit the Shrine of Inquisition or the House of Possibility, and I can’t recall seeing the orbiters when I did,” said Jehf.

Henza mulled that over for a moment. “I wonder if they were hidden to visitors?”

“It’s possible,” Jehf agreed. “Eriahmys seemed to have disguised her nature from her citizens, when I first found her. I met people who knew of her, but they did not think she was the Witch of Cinders.”

“Then perhaps we can use it,” said Ahlbrecht, placing her palm over the mirror’s surface. As she had seen Lusa do before, she swept her hand over the mirror. The group held their breath, but nothing happened.

“Try thinking at it really hard,” Camrys suggested. Ahlbrecht’s mouth quirked in a half-suppressed smile, but she took the suggestion. Where her hand passed over the mirror, the glass frosted, eliciting a gasp from the group and startling Ahlbrecht sufficiently that she lost her concentration. The frost vanished as she did, and the excited group began urging her to try again. She did so, focusing all her will upon the mirror, demanding it take her to the ruins of the Great City.

Frost blanketed the mirror and as it melted, the light within warped until it showed not the Partners in the stale tunnel but rather the disused remains of a root cellar. They let out a collective sigh as Ahlbrecht lowered her hand and the image remained. “You should go through first,” she told the group. They did as she bade, Ahlbrecht stepping through the portal last, into the dusty cellar. An equally large oval mirror stood behind them which briefly reflected the passage they had come through before shivering and returning to the appearance of a simple, out-of-place mirror.

They took a nearby ladder out of the cellar and emerged into the nearly indiscernible remains of an unidentifiable building that had long since succumbed to time. A pale sun awaited them in the cold air above, and all the landscape around them seemed gray and tumbled, yellow grass grown over unrecognizable, dirt-covered ruins and then mashed down by snow and ice.

Nearby, an odd little twig hut stood black against the lingering stonework, unusual for its shape, size, and impracticality. On the horizon, a few white tendrils of smoke curled skyward, visible against dark tree branches, and it was to this that the Partners walked. Behind them in Eriahmys, the Witches followed the thread of their covenants, and Ardis laughed as the Witches made their hasty way after their Partners. “So like us,” she remarked. “Just as restless.”

The township the Partners came upon was small but well-built and well-furnished. Each steep-roofed house had been thoroughly prepared against the cold, and the essentials of a life built only by human hands were all in evidence. Where the town’s people came from, none of the Partners could ascertain, for their features weren’t uniform, and though they spoke much of the trade language shared among the Witching Cities, the accented pastiche of it was unfamiliar. Nonetheless, the townspeople welcomed them without animosity—they knew of Eriahmys and presumed the four Partners had come from behind the golden walls on the southern horizon.

It was with some difficulty that Ahlbrecht explained their purpose to the town’s leadership. For far-flung peoples who did not live within the Cities, the Witches were purely mythical, propaganda become legends—stories invented about the strange, glimmering cities at the points of the compass. Even so, the townsfolk listened to the tale of the Great Witch and her city and the story of how the Witching Cities came to be made.

When this much had been conveyed, Jehf told them of the covenants, their breaking, and the town’s role in it. Here one of the town leaders interjected, suddenly alert. “Are you here to chase us from our home?”

“Not at all,” Jehf reassured him. “We only want you to know the history of it. We and the Witches have found our own way of fixing this, though few things will be the same.”

“Then what has this to do with us?” demanded another of the town’s leaders.

“We aren’t sure yet,” said Eriahmys, stepping into the room unannounced save by her shining personage. “The Witching Cities will most likely crumble—certainly the city of Illymere is no more. As they die, their people will scatter. Among these, some will surely follow the four before you, but others, especially refugees from Eriahmys, will find their way to you. Will you have them if they do?”

The settlers’ breath caught as they took in the sight of Eriahmys and her siblings, all imposing as they entered the small, smoky space. Camrys stood and gestured to each of the Witches in turn. “My good persons, I give you the Witch of Cinders, the Witch of Ice, the Witch of Storms, and the Witch of Winds, each named for the city she built.”

“How strange to have myths in your sitting room,” said one of the town leaders.

Eriahmys’s mouth twitched into amusement. “I can only imagine. But the matter at hand: the Witching Cities dissolve even now. Will you accept immigrants or no? If not, I shall dissuade my former citizens from coming this way, though I cannot promise the efficacy of doing so, for already things are not as they once were.”

The town leaders conferred amongst themselves as the Witches settled beside their Partners.

“How did you find us?” asked Jehf.

“Covenant,” said Lusa in a smug tone.

“Illymere is no more,” Eriahmys informed them. “I would not distress you with the details now, but that is the unfortunate truth of the matter.”

“One presumes it had to be done,” said Henza.

“Yes,” Ardis said decisively, though Selemay looked less certain.

Concluding their conference, the woman who appeared to be chief among the town’s leadership said, “We will accept any who can contribute to our community. Living in the wilderness by our own hands, we cannot afford the luxury of idleness.”

Eriahmys acknowledged this with a tilt of her head. “Then I will convey your sentiment to the people.”

“This Great Witch your companion mentioned,” said another of the town’s leaders. “Have we ought to fear of her?”

“No. She is gone. This land is free of her influence, and indeed my own.”

They exchanged a few more confirmations and tidings and finally rose, the Witches and Partners taking their leave with no rancor but also with no intent to return. When they had passed down into the root cellar and subsequently through the mirror-portal, Eriahmys alarmed them by engulfing the mirror with intense heat, melting it down to a lump of glass and silver on the passage floor. “Let this much be lost to history,” she said at a query from Jehf. “I cannot predict what will come next, but if the future holds any who could use such a device, I would not have this way be open to them.”

On the brief return journey to Eriahmys, Jehf asked, “What if our new covenants are not enough?”

“The dissolution of the cities will occur in either case,” said Eriahmys, “so it will only be we Witches who are notably impacted.”

“Would you… die?”

“Yes, but it would be several human generations in the making. We would first diminish, little by little, until at last we become no more than mortal ourselves and so pass as mortals do—or so I predict. Such a thing, if it has happened before, was never shared with us.”

“We would go in order,” added Ardis. “Eriahmys would be the last among us.”

Their movement through the city now was less a parade and more a promenade. Even in so short a time the glamour surrounding the Witches had lessened, and more and more the citizens went about their own business, noticing the celebrity of the Witch of Cinders but no longer her divinity. The Witches attained the Shrine of the Oracle where Eriahmys and Jehf bid farewell to their compatriots, each returning to what remained of their cities. When they were left alone, Eriahmys asked, “Well, Jehf. How shall we begin?”

“Slowly,” he said.


	8. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Centuries after the demise of Illymere, the long-lived matriarch of an ancient family comes to the end of her life.

Through her window, past the leisurely snowfall settling upon the barren flowerbox, Eri could see in the far distance the two remaining walls of Eriahmys glinting against the noon sun. In the ten generations since the failing of the Witching Cities, Eriahmys had dulled down to brass and steadily transformed to fit those residents who chose to stand by their home, even without the magic of a Witch to sustain its greatest wonders. The other cities had fared similarly, though Illymere became naught but ruins and Selemay relocated to a less disaster-prone part of nature.

With the exception of Ardis and Henza, the surviving Witches and their Partners left their cities behind with a small contingent of their former citizens, finding new lives and new homes, sometimes in unoccupied lands, sometimes among the settlements built by humans who had never known a Witch’s influence. In their new homes, they worked alongside their Partners to build the communities they had promised so long ago, though the work was, by its nature, not one of etheric power but one of dedicated labor, pushed a tiny morsel at a time—the human way. So it went until at last the Witches themselves faded back into stories half-remembered among the societies they had touched.

A knock at the door took Eri’s attention away from the window, and she called back in a cracked voice. Kaela stepped in, long skirt swaying with her characteristically decisive motion. Eri smiled upon her as the young woman settled on Eri’s bedside and took one of Eri’s cold, knobby hands into her own, chafing warmth into them.

“How are you feeling, great-gran?” she asked.

“My age,” said Eri with a chuckle, “which is saying something.”

Kaela rewarded the joke with a smile tightened by anxiety, and Eri brushed a lock of the girl’s hair back. Kaela so much resembled Jehf, sometimes Eri felt interacting with her as echoes, but this she had seen before for always humanity operated in cycles, even in its genetics. In that, Illymere had been right.

These thoughts flitting through her mind like stray embers, Eri said to her many-times-great granddaughter, “Don’t fret, my dear. My life has been well-filled; this is not so sad a thing.”

Kaela studied their joined hands rather than meet Eri’s eyes. “I understand, great-gran, but… I can’t feel that way about it. You’ve always been just… my great-gran, to me.”

Eri tilted Kaela’s chin up, better to convey her resolution. “And that has been my greatest honor, Kaela. I would not trade any of you for the power I once held, though it is selfish of me to say so.”

Kaela smiled weakly at this and pushed the subject away. “Would you mind a guest? Lizbet has come from Ahlstead. She said she had a feeling.”

“Of course! She is always welcome.”

“Then I’ll go get her.” Kaela rose and disappeared through the doorway, returning a few minutes later with a miniature Lusa, clad in the stiff slacks and starched collar so much the fashion in Ardis now. After swift greetings—for in many ways Lizbet felt more of Ardis than Lusa—she struck at the matter most pressing in her mind.

“How soon, Aunt Eri?”

“Very,” Eri tempered.

“Grandmother Lusa knew to the hour,” Lizbet pressed. When Eri didn’t respond she added, “They say she knew Grandmother Ahlbrecht’s time to the hour also.”

“Well,” said Eri, “they were so in love. How could she not? Has it been five years since we last saw each other?”

“It has.” Shifting her weight to another foot in discomfort, Lizbet added, “I’m sorry I haven’t visited since then. They say funerals have a way of bringing people together, but… Well, I’m sorry. I should have come sooner.”

Eri held out her hand, and Lizbet placed hers into it. “I don’t begrudge you it at all, dearling. You had a feeling and so you came, yes? That is plenty.”

Lizbet squeezed her hand. “I thought I’d lose it. The foresight, I mean—once she passed. But I suppose it doesn’t work that way.”

“Not at all,” laughed Eri. “What made you think so?”

Kaela and Lizbet exchanged a look, and Kaela provided, “We found old documents, from the first Partners. It took a while to find anyone who could read the old language well enough, but once we did and got a translation… well, Jehf and Camrys both wrote so much about their worry that the covenant they made with the Witches wouldn’t take.”

“Jehf explained it in his,” continued Lizbet. “About how the Witches—how you would fade away eventually if it didn’t work. And, well, you have.”

“There’s really old footage of you, great-gran, from before the power left. It’s poor quality, but it’s you, and Lusa. Selemay is there, but she’s already old, and Ardis is still youthful, but it’s clear she’s lost the power too. It’s some sort of ceremony, I think.”

“The opening of the Illymere ruins,” Eri provided with a sigh. “Ardis quarantined it for decades. She and Selemay spent so much of their remaining time making it safe, making sure, and then they opened it to archaeologists and historians. An amazing day for those fields—as a ruin, Illymere was so well-preserved. We decided to make an appearance together—our last real appearance as the Witches of Old, as they called us then. We told our story one last time and then we decided to go about our business as if we were simply unusually tall humans. Well, as much as we could, anyway.” She chuckled. “We’d already started living like humans, I think, long ago.”

Kaela settled upon the bedside again, and Lizbet pulled over a spare armchair. “So what the first Partners wrote is true then? The new covenants failed and the Witches… faded.”

“Not at all,” said Eri. “The covenants were entirely successful. If they hadn’t been, Selemay would’ve passed within two generations, Ardis four, Lusa eight, and myself sixteen. You’ll notice that my sisters lasted much longer than that—all of them—and that I am lasting significantly less time. Indeed, we are all of us separated by scarce years in our passing.”

“Then, what’s happening?” whispered Kaela.

“Why, we’ve lived,” said Eri, “as humans do. We walked among the people and worked alongside them, no longer deities protecting a land in isolation, but rather leaders building a community in collaboration. We formed families, each in our own fashion, but families all the same, and as always happens with families, bits of ourselves passed on to those we loved. We didn’t truly love, when the Witching Cities stood bright upon the continent. We didn’t live, either, but a facsimile of it. No, we fulfilled the new covenant to the letter and beyond—we chose the word Partner by no accident, my children. Our fading, our passing, it is because we gave our power in increments to our friends and communities, and those communities have been what we and our Partners envisioned because every hand that has worked to improve them has been a human one, even ours.

“Lizbet, you inherited part of Lusa’s power particularly strongly because you are blood relations, but nearly every individual in Ahlstead and certainly all who are descended from its founders carry a piece of Lusa’s power too. The same is true of this community and you, Kaela. I did not _lose_ my power, but rather I gave it away freely—a gift from the very beginning. And when it was gone, I ceased to be the Witch of Cinders, and finally became that more remarkable thing—a woman.”

Lizbet let out a held breath. “That’s why all of you seem so happy at death.”

“Well, no one likes to die,” said Eri, “but, no, it doesn’t feel sad. Lusa and I spoke of it often, after Selemay passed. This felt to us more right, to scatter the immense power bottled up in each of us among many whose each small action can change a world as surely as our large ones did. Just as our power became our own, that power is your own. It cannot be taken from you. But, as our Mother lived in us always, so too do we live in you. A cycle, sad in some ways, but for us, who lived so long and so frequently alone—it is a cycle worth embracing.”

Eri fell silent, gazing once more out the window at her bedside, as Lizbet and Kaela digested her words.

“I’m not sure how I feel about inheriting magic,” Kaela said wryly.

“If it helps you to think of yourself as a magician, then do,” said Eri, “but to us the power was always a kind of instinct to manifest our will. I think for you it is also an instinct. At its core, it is simply the determination to unfurl your will.”

The armchair creaked as Lizbet leaned back in it. “No spells, no special effects, no incantations—just knowing what to do and then doing it.”

“Exactly,” said Eri, pinning them each with a sharp look. Through it, both women briefly had a vision of Eriahmys as she had once been, radiant raiment and burning flame a set dressing to her personal grandeur. The impression swiftly faded, but for all their lives it would revive in moments of thoughtlessness, like a long-dead memory rekindled by an unexpected scent.

They sat with Eri through the rest of the afternoon, sometimes quiet, sometimes conversing of lighter things. Other relations joined them for an hour here and half-hour there, many driven by the same insistent feeling that had brought Lizbet calling. When at last the darkness of a winter evening fully enclosed them and Eri’s aged body could no longer stand wakefulness, Lizbet and Kaela chased away the remaining guests, blessed Eri with their love, and left as well, switching the ceiling light off as they did.

Eri settled deeper into her many pillows and looked to the dusted sky beyond the frosting glass of her window. Each star wriggled beneath her gaze, and she anticipated the fire within them with a connoisseur’s relish. Below her, the house steadily roamed into sleepy silence, the entertainments and screens and conversation disappearing in footsteps and the creak of wood less old than Eri. The golden walls of the city that had once been hers dimmed to iron without the sunlight, but still she could pick them out among the hills and trees and roofs complicating the horizon. Her sight returned to the night sky and her memories until at last, with a smile, she closed her eyes.


End file.
